The goal of this project is to improve our knowledge of mortality in former Soviet Central Asia, a region which gained importance recently. Although there is considerable interest in understanding social, economic and cultural change in the area, in regard to the strategic role that this region is currently playing, very little is known about local mortality processes. In addition to filling these gaps in contextual mortality information, this project will improve our understanding of the relative role that social, economic and cultural factors can play in determining mortality patterns in developing countries. This project plans to gather and analyze unpublished aggregate- and individual-level data from local statistical offices in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan. The analysis of these sources will be complemented by the use of data from Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) and Living Standards Measurement Study (LSMS) household surveys. The implementation of various demographic and statistical methods will permit (a) the assessment of data quality and changes therein for each of these five republics since 1958; (b) the estimation of ethnic-specific and cause-specific mortality rates for each of these five republics since 1958; (c) the analysis of behavioral, biomedical, economic, social and cultural factors associated with recent mortality levels, trends and differentials in Central Asia.